Compass
- Mar 12
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 31
The Compass: A Systems Instrument for Evidence-Based Product Strategy
Most product decisions begin with assumptions dressed as research. Surveys measure what is asked. Interviews measure what is said. Both filter through compliance, social performance, and the agenda of whoever commissioned them. By the time a team discovers the assumption was wrong, months of investment have already moved in one direction.
https://glintsphere.pro/compass
The Compass is the premium research instrument within the GlintSphere pipeline, built to close that gap before it costs anything.
I designed the Compass as a navigable decision instrument. Built from up to 300 curated testimonials from Reddit, Quora, Trustpilot, and industry forums, it surfaces what people say when no one is watching. No curation bias. No compliance filter. Direct experience data at scale.
The instrument runs three simultaneous lenses: the organizational POV, the individual POV, and the white space between them. That gap is where the sharpest strategic signal lives, and where most discovery methods don't look.
Five interlocking map types structure the findings into a complete strategic picture:
Pain: where friction lives, how intensely, how frequently.
Demand: what users are actually trying to accomplish
Gap: where importance is high and current solutions fall short
Failure: where competitors are already losing users and why
Attention: what to build, defer, and avoid
The sequencing is deliberate. Each map feeds into the next, converting raw evidence into a product strategy that follows logically from what the market is actually saying, not from what a persona model predicts it might say.
In practice, the Compass compresses domain expert validation from weeks to hours. The problem space is already mapped and structured; the expert validates rather than excavates.
For founders and operators making high-stakes decisions under uncertainty, the Compass is the starting point that brings evidence and strategy into a single instrument, and can be returned to whenever a decision needs grounding. Each map is a structured instrument intended for human-in-the-loop validation. The problem space is already mapped when they arrive. In my experience, that compression delivers 95% validation within an hour, not weeks.
The maps don't retire after validation. The Demand, Gap, Failure, and Attention maps travel with the build process. For every team decision, every pivot, every feature debate, the maps hold the context. Your maps will keep you aligned with what users actually need, not what sounds true based on instinct or a DIY prompt.
That's the difference between building with evidence and building with alleged confidence.
See it in action, four maps already built: Persona Gap / AI took my job / AI job interview / Neurodivergent at work https://glintsphere.pro/compass
BE FIRST.
GlintSphere opens soon, automated, single-lens, free. A starting point.
This sprint runs ahead of it. Hand-curated testimonials. B2B and B2C mapped simultaneously — the sharpest insights live in the overlap. My reading, my UX audit, a structured artifact built for fast expert validation.
The edge is discretion. Mine.
Available to a limited number of founders.
Book a conversation to find out if this is the right moment for you.
Tamar Schori
Senior UX/AI Strategist